Your comic collecting timeline

I'll go first....

1978 <----> 1986 Beginner. Reader, collector, fan - I started collecting with X-Men #110 April 1978 and was instantly hooked. That same day I went back and got Machine Man #1. Wow. What a great 2 first comic books to pick up. Gave me a full range of comic wonderment. I was 11 years old and felt like I was looking at the coolest shit ever imagined. I remember not long after that I purchased an FF #198. X-Men started out as my #1 collection. From that point I collected every issue until about #162 or so. I lost interest after Byrne left. I spread out in all directions and made friendships with guys around me that collected. In school, comics was big. We would trade in school or loan out issues to read during classes and give back to each other when class was over. I even started drawing my own comic books and it was actually the introduction to me getting into art. I ended up having a few hundred comics during this period. I distinctly remember my dad telling my mom that one day I'll grow out of comics.

1987<--->1989 - Out of comics - I really thought I had outgrown comics. At the beginning of this period, I was 20. I remember towards the end of my collecting days in the previous period, I had grown ashamed of collecting comics. When I was an older teenager, I remember going to the 7-11 and buying 4 or 5 comics and started walking home. Suddenly, I heard a group of girls I knew call my name and start running towards me. In my fear of being discovered, I remember stuffing the comic bag under my shirt before they got to me. Wow. It just wasn't cool to read comics. It's a stigma I think still exists. Funny how ashamed I was of it back then.

1990<--->1997 - Rebirth, Convention years, Rise and Fall of Comics, Perhaps the height of it all - Many people look back on this era as an ugly period but I think there was never a better time to be into comics. I remember I was in A-School in the Navy and during an off day, my friends wanted to go to the comic store. I didn't want to go. I thought it was nerdy. But I tagged along. I remember walking in the store and seeing a bunch of comics I had and was in major shock to see how much comics had went up. I had a lot of books sitting at home worth money. This was also about the time of Todd McFarlane's Spiderman #1. Wow, was we regular fanboys. We bought those up and everything else hot. When I made my way home, I dug out all my old comics. I was back into it but never harder. I remember going to a flea market and buying an Amazing Spiderman #40 (1st origin Green Goblin for $20 in nice shape). I took it to a convention and traded it for 12 Silver Age Fantastic Fours. This would begin my Silver Age Collection. Along about this time, Joey who would later become known as Comic Kings, showed me some old bulletin board print outs proclaiming Valiant Comics hot and scorching for big money on the west coast. Meanwhile, the east coast had them sitting on stands for cover price. I went out and spent every dollar I had buying Valiant comics. I literally went hunting like it was a treasure hunt. I had boxes and entire collections of pre-Unity Valiants. And within 2 months, just as predicted, Valiant exploded on the East Coast. This began my 2-3 year realm with Comic Conventions. Wow, talk about easy money and fun. I was having a blast. Comics were so hot. Not long after the gimmicks were in full force. And soon, the death of Superman. There was literally a convention almost every weekend. It was great. And then I remember taking a walk towards the end of a show and noticing that every man, woman and child and this included old people who never purchased a comic in their life, had a comic booth with boxes of Valiants as their main item. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I literally rushed back to my comics and slapped crazy low prices on Valiants and undercut everybody. I sold and traded every last Valiant I had. And not a moment too soon. About a month later, the bottom dropped and you couldn't give a Valiant away. Around the same time, comics started collapsing. Conventions dried up. People stopped buying. The shows no longer made money and life got hard for me. I remember I struggled to remain in but by time Heroes Reborn came out, I was on my way out.

1997<--->2001 Out of comics, done again - I really thought this was it for me. I was out and fully intended for it to be that way. No one was buying comics anymore. It was dead. There just didn't seem to be a reason to stay.

2002<--->Present - The collector years - I came back out of curiosity wanting to see if any of my books were worth money. I bought a price guide and quickly noticed a phenomenon I hadn't never seen before. Graded comics! OMG! They did it! Comics had found a way to have comics graded like Baseball cards. Holy Shit! The prices! This was hot! And to boot, the internet and eBay was making the collecting world exciting again! I came back in trying to learn the ropes. I started buying new comics and noticed right away for the first time in my collecting career that I couldn't get a handle on what was going on in comics. I would pick up bits and pieces but I would not be able to bring it all together. In the previous period of collecting, I could walk into a comic store and look at new comics on the wall and just pick out the ones I knew would make money. And I was right. Gone was those days. Now I couldn't even grasp what was happening in comics. To try and keep up, the internet had gotten good at creating message boards. I started frequenting ones about comics. It was great. Now there were great places to go to discuss comics with other people. I was all in. Not long later I was frequenting Defiant1's board and he shut the place down for a period. I tried to convince him to keep the place open, but instead he gave me a link to proboards and basically told me to make my own board. On July 14, 2007....Comic Crack was born. Only then, it was called Gotta Start Somewhere. I know, dumb name. Didn't know what to name it. I tried not making it be just about comics and thought I had created this all encompassing site about man topics. But DF1 pointed out people dont go to internet sites about a vast array of topics. The typically search out one. When I thought about it, I knew he was right. I narrowed the focus to comic and by 2009, changed the name to Comic Crack. In the meantime, I had been collecting off the subscription service DCBS and was buying between $50 - $100 a month of comics. But I noticed along the way I was only enjoying about 2-3 comics a month. The quality never felt shittier. I tried to search comics out high and low and bought a multitude of titles and genres, but the ratio stayed about the same. About a year ago. I gave up on new comics. Now, I strictly a collector only interested in collecting collectibles. I'll keep an open mind about the future but as it stands now. I dont see myself going back to new comics for the time being.

Been gone awhile, figure I can try and get back into the swing before I inevitably disappear again. This is a fun topic.

I started collecting in 1989. I was 9 years old, and a friend of mine got me hooked on the Marvel/Epic Elfquest run. This is what initially got me visiting comicbook stores. I was living on Long Island at the time, and the nearest shop was about an hour's walk away. Amazing Comics in Sayville... it's still there, I think. Anyways, Went in for the Elfquest... stayed for the X-Men.

I collected pretty hardcore until about 1994. I took a particular interest in X-Factor, which, when I began collecting it, was in the #70's or so... I wanted to own the entire run... probably because, comparatively, the back issues were so much cheaper than their Uncanny counterparts. I amassed a pretty decent collection, about two longboxes worth (which was crazy huge to me at the time). I handed out fliers for the TCBY down the block to earn the money to collect the Death of Superman story and the X-Cutioner's Song crossover ($1.50 an issue because they were bagged with a damn trading card). That's actually one of the most vivid collecting memories I have. I remember going door-to-door dropping off fliers the evening before Thanksgiving. Great times... I'd love to revisit that time.

I dropped comics when I saw X-Men (vol.2) #45 on the stands... another damn foil cover, for double the price... for seemingly NO reason. I realized that I wouldn't be able to afford my X-Men fix for that month, and just walked away.

During the summer of 1997, my family moved across country to Arizona. I had just graduated High School, and didn't have any friends. I found myself re-reading my old comics, which got me back into it. I've collected on and off (mostly on) since then.

Now I get my books online (DCBS), as I just can't afford them otherwise. They price their $2.99 books at $1.79 and their $3.99 books at $2.39... I can actually keep up with my favorites now. Instead of going to the comic shop... my haunts now are used book stores and used record stores... these places don't mark up their old books, and I can get 'em for a steal.

Now, my collection occupies an entire room of my house, and I'm sitting at 51 long boxes. I've become a lot better in my adulthood at only buying what I want to read.

Again, fun topic... it's always nice to reflect.